Armenia

Slipping over the sill of history
from memory into mythology
from passion to trivia
the forgotten people of the forgotten valleys of those long forgotten years

Armenia: I imagine
an almost empty land
of ochre mountains and silent lakes
everything tinged with washed out red
empty to a vast sky
the end of summer;
a haunted land
whose meanings and messages are invisible
to its present transient inhabitants
who see the piles of stones, but not
the cherished churches, gardens, homes
of another time, another life.

I see it still, in nineteen-sixteen;
how sad it is, neither gardens nor graves
no-one remembers Armenia.

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"Who now remembers the Armenians?" - said to be Hitler's response to an aide who hesitated at the posibility of exterminating the Jewish people.